The Bernard L. Schwartz
Fellows Program

Archives: The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program Articles and Op-Eds

Why Corporate America Shrugged at the Wal-Mart Bribery Scandal

  • By
  • Steve LeVine,
  • New America Foundation
May 16, 2012 |

When the New York Times reported last month that Wal-Mart had brazenly been bribing government officials in Mexico, the public responded with anger. According to the Washington Post, the outcry forced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to slow its campaign to water down the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the 1977 law that bars payoffs to foreign decision-makers in exchange for business. The agitation also led to a 5 percent drop in the price of Wal-Mart stock.

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“Privatizing” Space

  • By
  • Konstantin Kakaes,
  • New America Foundation
May 16, 2012 |

Later this week, a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX, a young company founded by Elon Musk, is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket will carry a Dragon capsule, also built by SpaceX, to the International Space Station. This is being hailed as a conspicuously important achievement because SpaceX, which Musk founded in 2002 with money from his share of PayPal, is a private company. The temptation to celebrate the privatization of space exploration—the unleashing of all those entrepreneurial billionaires to take us where we haven’t been before—is understandable.

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Government and the Net Serve Us, Not Vice Versa

  • By
  • Rebecca MacKinnon,
  • New America Foundation
May 16, 2012 |

A global struggle for control of the internet is under way. At stake is nothing less than civil liberties, privacy and democracy itself. Electronic censorship and surveillance are on the rise -- not only in dictatorships but also in democracies. Facebook and Google are battling over who will be our gateway to the rest of the internet through "like" buttons and universal logins -- giving them huge power over our online identities and activities. Companies are clashing with governments over how far the law should extend into private networks, platforms and devices.

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Why Computers Still Can’t Translate Languages Automatically

  • By
  • Konstantin Kakaes,
  • New America Foundation
May 11, 2012 |

Recently, on the eighth floor of an office building in Arlington, Va., Rachel held her finger down on a Dell Streak touchscreen and asked Aziz whether he knew the village elder.

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On Marriage, The Risk Is Romney's

  • By
  • Noam Scheiber,
  • New America Foundation
May 10, 2012 |

In endorsing gay marriage, Barack Obama may have gotten ahead of public opinion on one of the most emotional issues in politics. And yet I can’t help thinking the move poses more risk for Mitt Romney. Am I crazy?

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Machines Shouldn’t Grade Student Writing—Yet

  • By
  • Dana Goldstein,
  • New America Foundation
May 9, 2012 |

In 2002, Indiana rolled out computer scoring of its 11th grade state writing exam. At the time, ETS, the company that developed Indiana’s software, said automatic writing assessment could help cut the state’s testing budget in half. But by 2007, Indiana had abandoned the practice.

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Our Anti-Innovation, Anti-Business, and Anti-People Immigration Law

  • By
  • Alexandra Starr,
  • New America Foundation
May 8, 2012 |

Sen. Marco Rubio's proposal to allow undocumented immigrant youth to stay in the country legally has elicited interest among some immigration reform advocates. That's primarily because it has breathed life into a moribund effort. Under Rubio's as-yet unwritten plan, men and women who came to the United States as children and are pursuing higher education would be able to live in the country legally. Unlike the original DREAM Act, which has failed repeatedly to pass the U.S. Congress, the legislation wouldn't provide a pathway to citizenship for this group.

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Why We Still Like Ike

  • By
  • Tamar Jacoby,
  • New America Foundation
May 8, 2012 |

In July 1959, JFK had dinner with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. at Hyannis Port, and late in the evening over drinks and cigars, the politician told the historian what he really thought of the sitting president. “No man is less loyal to old friends than Eisenhower,” Kennedy said with what Schlesinger later described as “contempt.” Eisenhower was “terribly cold and terribly vain,” Kennedy continued. “In fact, he is a shit.”

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Islamo-Foolish

  • By
  • Fred Kaplan,
  • New America Foundation
May 7, 2012 |

Among the cache of documents that the SEALs captured during their raid of Osama Bin Laden’s compound last year, one in particular should make many Republican foreign-policy advisers reassess their whole approach to the “war on terror.”

It’s the letter—No. 9 of the 17 missives that the administration released this week through West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center—in which Bin Laden discusses what he calls the “very important matter” of changing the name of al-Qaida.

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How the Obama Administration’s Narrative About Chen Guangcheng Unraveled, One Tweet at a Time

  • By
  • Emily Parker,
  • New America Foundation
May 4, 2012 |

When Chen Guangcheng departed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday with apparent guarantees that he would lead a safe and productive life in his native land, it seemed that a major international crisis had been averted. In a startlingly short period of time, American and Chinese officials had hammered out an agreement that seemed to protect Chen, while preserving the bilateral relationship.

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